A potential future Hall of Famer has his eyes on Marcus Stroman this year.
CC Sabathia has high hopes for the Mets pitcher after he tossed a perfect two innings featuring a disgusting new split-changeup against the Houston Astros on Tuesday.
Sabathia called Stroman his "dark horse" candidate for this year's Cy Young Award.
"It's coming up on his free agent year, he's got a lot to prove, he opted out last year, the Mets are a really good team, so I think if he can put it all together and have a full, healthy season, I think this may be the year he actually turns into that guy that everybody's been waiting for him to turn into," Sabathia said on R2C2 with Ryan Ruocco, "which is a top-end, top of the rotation type guy that can win the Cy Young any year."
Stroman finished in eighth place in the American League vote in 2017, when his 3.09 ERA was the third-lowest in the AL. He has had four seasons where his ERA has been lower than 3.23, including his most recent season where he pitched to a 3.22 ERA in 2019. He also had a 7.8 K/9 ratio in 2019, the highest of his career. In 11 starts with the Mets that year, he struck 9.1 batter per nine innings.
"He looked really good [Tuesday]. Good control of his pitches, his body. He's throwing the split-change now. Obviously with all the different variations he can do in his windup and mess with your timing, it throws the hitters off. If he can just pump strikes and keep that timing off, I think he has a good chance of having a really, really good year walking into his free agent year...
"He doesn't have to be the ace, because they have an ace. And you got [Noah] Syndergaard coming back. Just takes a little bit of pressure off of him to be able to go out and kinda just do his thing."
Surely, Sabathia isn't the only one who is confident in Stroman -- the 30-year-old righty himself said he is "gonna go out there and deal all year."